The Department of Youth Affairs and Sports, the World Food Programme and Ampath are developing a programme to enhance youth access to employment through agribusiness.

The programme targets capacity building of youth groups and individual youth to enable them to adopt innovative approaches to the entire agricultural value chains.

“The program is anchored on a deliberate move to bring back our youth to agriculture so they can explore businesses in the whole value chain,” Chief Officer for Youth, Nahum Jelagat, says.

County Director of Youth Affairs, Peter Ruto says: “The Department will support the programme in identifying an initial pilot fifteen youth groups as we grow the programme to cover all the thirty wards,” says Director of Youth Affairs, Peter Ruto.

The program primarily capacity-builds youth groups to get into farming and take up businesses in the value chain.

Mr Ruto spoke on Tuesday during a youth meeting at Kanetik Farm in Kiplombe Ward, Turbo Sub-County.

Apex Youth Group is one of the identified groups. The group, mentored by Kong’eluk Farmers Cooperative, grows vegetables and aggregates milk for sale to institutions around its Kanetik location.

The group is largely made up of fresh graduates in animal production, agriculture and agronomics, economics and marketing.

WFP’s Keziah Kerochi says: “We are bringing together partners in the agriculture value chains so that as we empower these youth to expand their businesses, more job opportunities are created and also, the society becomes food secure.”

With technology, youth can explore and fit into production, aggregation (collection) value addition, packaging marketing and branding of agricultural products.